


Deepest Sympathies

by Beldam



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, reverse au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 04:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11455731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beldam/pseuds/Beldam
Summary: Zenyatta loses one of his brothers and Genji offers what comfort he can.





	Deepest Sympathies

**Author's Note:**

> Uses versions of the characters from the [reverse au.](http://reversewatch.tumblr.com/FAQ)

One of Zenyatta’s aides is killed in Numbani—a brother from Nepal. One of the few who followed him when he left the Shambali behind.

He is in Hanamura when he hears the news. The message is passed on by another of his retainers and is done without an ounce of fanfare. In turn, he articulates his remorse and suggests an arrangement for the body in under fifteen words, the fact of his brother’s death a barely acknowledged asterisk hastily penciled into the middle of his itinerary. It is not ideal (there is never an ideal way to deliver such news, nor an ideal way to receive it) but there is no use in making a spectacle of it. Not when such losses are so common, given the world they live in, and the work they do.

Usually when he learns someone has passed away Zenyatta keeps his emotions in check, pushes them aside so he can examine them later, in private. So he is surprised that when his retainer says, “AD1 was attacked and killed yesterday evening,” the first thing he feels is _smug_. It stays with him the rest of the conversation, sticking firm to his wires and servos in spite of his best efforts to shake it and force it away. It is not right (AD1 was someone he cared about, and to feel this way, and to only feel this way, is _not right_ ) but how can he help himself when his brother’s murder confirms something Zenyatta had suspected all along: that there is no place in the world where humans are that omnics can be safe. Numbani is no different. It can’t be, not with humans being what they are, which makes it all the more unforgivable that it would give omnics reason to hope.

 _City of harmony_. Peace, unity. Friendship, understanding, equality: utter chicanery. Buzz words and slogans. Something pretty to put on a pamphlet, to inscribe beneath a flag. Bloated, empty, vapid words.

Nothing but meaningless _talk_.

Just as he had always known.

The remainder of the day passes easily (though surely it should not) but by the time he has gotten through his schedule and returned to his suite, the superiority that churned within him earlier now sits stagnant. Instead of buoying his righteousness and his anger, it sinks in him, folds in on itself like a singularity. Infinitely small and infinitely dense; barely present, but still vividly felt.

It feels much less like superiority now, he thinks, and a great deal more like grief.

He tries to focus on other things. He reads. He looks over the sites he will visit tomorrow, the calls he will have to make, the meetings he will attend. He checks things over with his aides. He lights the incense burner in the corner of his room. He recites mantras. He prays. He aches.

The sun is beginning to set when a long shadow falls across the bedroom floor, cast through the balcony’s glass door. He needn’t investigate to know the cause, and resentment prickles within him that he has to deal with this at all, let alone today of all days. But he rises from his cross-legged position and glides across the room to slide open the door.

Outside, it smells like rain. Pale clouds expand and darken across the orange sky. A wind picks up—and Shimada Genji shifts his weight on Zenyatta’s balcony railing and sighs into it, his hair whipping away from his shoulders, jacket flapping at his back, staring down at the thirty stories of air beneath him but fearing nothing of a fall.

Since Zenyatta started visiting in Hanamura, it is not infrequent that Genji will appear this way, showing up in strange, precarious places at odd and inappropriate times. Usually Zenyatta does not mind the company, if only because Genji is a good means of relieving stress. Today is different. Zenyatta wants nothing more than to be alone with himself, and the thought of having to entertain this human grinds at the edges of his exquisitely fragile tolerance.

But, he reminds himself, spurning a man with Genji’s resources would be short-sighted, if not out-and-out foolish, and he is neither of these things. So he musters all his patience and prepares to greet his business partner in the usual way—when a gust of wind blasts a smoky, acrid scent from Genji’s direction right into his face, less like cigarettes and more like burned hair.

“ _What_ is that smell?” Zenyatta says sharply, suddenly distinctly irritated.

Rather than answer, Genji gives a disbelieving chuckle. “Come on, Zenyatta. First time I see you in almost a week and that’s the hello I get?” He turns around, feet still planted hazardously on the bannister as he drops to his haunches. He rests his cheek against his knuckles and smiles. “ _Hidoi yo ne.._.”

Zenyatta’s body winds tight, fighting against every ounce of his control. “You did not answer my question, Shimada.”

“What’re you so hung up on all of a sudden…” Genji sighs, and his dismissiveness rankles the omnic more than he could possibly describe. “If you’re still curious about it tomorrow, you’ll be able to read about it in the morning news. But I think you’d be wasting your time if you did.”

“I cannot imagine I would notice losing a few additional minutes here or there,” Zenyatta says caustically, “considering what a colossal waste of time you are regardless.”

Genji’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline. “Wow, where did _that_ come from?”

“Nowhere,” Zenyatta says, more annoyed at himself for losing his cool than at Genji for prompting it. “It is not your concern.”

“You’re sure making it _seem_ like it’s my concern. Something you want to talk about?”

The sullen silence Zenyatta gives in response is enough to make Genji frown. “Hey.” Genji reaches out his hand and touches Zenyatta’s face. Something like static--a singing, electric buzz--arcs between Genji’s fingers and the plating of Zenyatta’s cheek. Genji tilts forward, as if he might better understand Zenyatta if only he were but a centimeter closer. Coaxing, he murmurs, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Zenyatta says, but even he realizes he sounds uncharacteristically terse. Rather than linger on it, he grabs Genji’s wrist and forces his hand away. “Would you care to enter, or shall I lock you out on the balcony?”

Genji’s frown deepens. “You know you can tell me.”

“I said, nothing is wrong, Shimada.”

“Hm.” Genji rests his chin in his hands, openly dubious. After a moment of thought he asks, “Want me to meditate with you?”

 _Of course not_ , Zenyatta nearly sneers. Why would he share something with Genji that he has only ever done with his followers, his students, his brothers and sisters? How could he be expected to find a modicum of peace meditating beside a human partner, let alone a human as base and vicious as this? That Genji thinks Zenyatta would entertain such an outlandish request, as if Genji is worth anything to him beyond his express purpose to be used, is as pitiable as it is revolting. He is just about ready to turn down the offer (and to make a suggestion of his own) when Genji quirks his lip slightly, and actually manages to evoke the appearance of genuine worry.  

Zenyatta halts. The words “No, thank you,” are formulated in his mind but his synthesizer refuses to translate that into speech. He tries to rephrase, but his body refuses to give a firm rejection. Rather than let the silence drag too long, he is forced to change tack: he relents.

“Fine,” he says dismissively. He gestures for Genji to come forward and begins to retreat inside. “Do not be troublesome.”

“ _Me_?” Genji gasps, hand on his chest like he’s been wounded as he hops off the banister and follows Zenyatta into the hotel room. The door clicks quietly when he slides it shut behind them.

The omnic doesn’t look at Genji as he moves to the incense burner in the corner of the room and settles in front of it. He decides to sit on the floor, for once. He is certain Genji would pester him about it if he hovered.

He rests his hands on his knees and straightens his back just as he feels Genji settle behind him, that smoky, sulfuric smell that clings to him mingling unpleasantly with the sandalwood incense. The ninja fidgets for a few seconds, moving left and right, before finally sitting still.

“Is this okay?”

“Yes, that is—” Zenyatta grunts when Genji shoves his back hard against him, intentionally jostling him. “You are very annoying,” Zenyatta grumbles, and Genji laughs in response. The omnic very nearly elbows him in the ribs. “This was _your_ suggestion, _Shimada._ ”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Genji snickers. He leans back, but this time doesn’t push. His ponytail brushes the nape of Zenyatta’s neck. Their shoulder blades touch. Zenyatta can feel Genji’s heartbeat, his breathing, steady and slow, possessed of a predator’s practiced, indelible calm. It’s the first time Zenyatta has experienced Genji’s presence this way. Usually when they are this close he is panting and heaving, curling outwards, pulse so strong that it rattles his entire form like the cage of a feral animal. Zenyatta’s mind is just beginning to stray to thoughts of the ninja’s strong, hard body coming apart in his hands when Genji chirps, “Well?” Another, gentler shove. “You have my full attention. Teach me, _Master_.”

Zenyatta’s claws dig into his knees. “If I were you,” he says, voice bordering on a growl, “I would think twice about employing that terminology outside of the proper context, or else you will very quickly go from sitting at my back to _kneeling_ at my _feet._ ”

“ _Fuck,_ ” Genji hisses. “Don’t say that shit while I’m trying to concentrate.”

“ _Are_ you trying to concentrate? I am afraid you have not made it terribly obvious.”

“Come on. You know me—just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Zenyatta loosens his hands, flexes them before he rests them palm-up on either leg. “So you will… Though I would think any member of the Shimada family would be no stranger to meditation.”

“I mean, sure.” He feels Genji shrug. “My dad used to make us meditate all the time when I was young.”

 _Us_. Genji, and the other, dead Shimada.

The brother Genji murdered in cold blood.

Zenyatta allows his visual sensors to flick off so he can focus—he forces away the slow, crawling cold that has begun to drag its way up his spine. “What do you remember from what your father taught you?”

“The usual stuff, I guess. Mind your breathing, focus your mind, all that mumbo jumbo.”

“It did not work?”

“It was _boring_. I didn’t see the point.”

“You had no use for inner peace?”

Genji laughs mirthlessly. “More like, I had no room for it.”

Zenyatta chuckles in turn, equally flat. He feels oddly fatigued as he murmurs: “Perhaps we are similar in that regard…”

The atmosphere of the room darkens. He feels Genji move a bit to one side, as if he’s glancing over his shoulder.

“You know,” the ninja says, “there is one thing I remember really clearly. This sutra he used to recite--the _Hannya Shingyo_. Do you know it?”

“Intimately,” says Zenyatta. “Though I have never heard it in Japanese.”

“Yeah?” Genji perks up. “Do you want me to try recite it for you? It won’t be perfect, but...”

“That is no trouble.” It is Zenyatta’s turn to press back against his companion, quietly urging. “If you are able, then do as you can. And if you do it poorly, then that is just as well. At least then I will be able to to extract some amusement from it.”

“Come on, I’m trying to do something nice for you here. You’re not going to laugh at me, are you? Do you want to make me cry?”

“At every possible opportunity.”

Genji gurgles with disgust. “Do you actually want me to do this or do you just want to make fun of me for offering?”

“Have I made you anxious?” Zenyatta titters quietly. “Forgive me that. By all means, continue. I am listening.”

The ninja waits a few seconds, as if expecting another jab to land at any second and bracing himself for it. When Zenyatta remains silent, he inhales heavily, his posture loosening against Zenyatta’s firm bearing. “Alright, then,” he utters. “Here I go.”

Genji is a good speaker, Zenyatta thinks as the ninja tentatively begins. There is no reason for him to have an ear for sutras, but as he recites the lines, “‘Oh, Sariputra, Form does not differ from the Void, and the Void does not differ from Form,” his cadence is that of a practiced acolyte, each word exhaled as naturally as the breath that accompanies it. Zenyatta knows, in his mind, that it is because Genji is an accomplished mimic. He knows he speaks the words so well because his father spoke them well, and if they were played side-by-side, they would sound identical, revealing Genji’s seeming understanding to be completely fraudulent, his comprehension gleaned from the _sound_ rather than the _content_. But where the mind knows better, the soul is easily deceived. Zenyatta listens, and he tunes his thoughts to Genji’s voice--and as the sutra is recited in Japanese, Zenyatta follows along in Sanskrit, hearing it as he heard it in Nepal, in the voices of his brothers and sisters moved to perfect harmony, the snow and stone and mountains singing out, _Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha._  
  
Speaking low behind him, Genji inhales air and breathes out winter wind. His long hair falling against Zenyatta’s neck prickles with mountain cold. His heart pounds with the guileless tempo of monastic feet, stepping in perfect time. The pungent, burning scent upon his clothes morphs into the smell of coal flame crackling beneath an iron pot, an earthbound beacon in a constellation-filled night, offerings lit at dusk, fires doused at dawn.

The shuddering, lingering sadness that Zenyatta had been carrying since that morning, swaddled in spite and clinging like a newborn, loosens its grip, and while it does not (cannot) let go, it relents, and softens its touch. Nostalgia and longing, a loneliness that will not go out, are sated for a moment, finding familiarity in Genji’s half-familiar words. Zenyatta takes it all in, listening, falling, and finds he cannot meditate—he drifts to sleep.

His internal clock informs him that several hours have passed when he returns to consciousness. His array flicks on to find a darkened room, the only light being cast from the neon signs of buildings outside his window, shivering like mirages in a heavy rain that has started to fall. He takes a moment to recalibrate his other senses, and frustratingly, his instruments hone in on the emptiness that plagues his back. Genji is gone.

 _Of course,_ Zenyatta thinks, and cannot help but think it bitterly, although it would have been far stranger if a restless man like Genji had found cause to stay, unprompted, for so many hours in silen--

“Finally awake, huh?”

Zenyatta’s systems jolt into cohesion at Genji’s voice coming from somewhere in the room, muffled by the _tat-tat-tat_ of rain drumming against glass.

“I was not asleep,” the omnic lies, and obviously at that, given his synth isn’t fully calibrated and sounds distinctly off as he speaks.

The ninja responds, “Sure, sure,” sounding as unconvinced as Zenyatta is unconvincing. “It didn’t seem like you were meditating, though.”

“I was thinking.”

“What about?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Mmm, that’s good,” Genji hums. “You think too much, anyway.”

“I suppose you would say that-- _anything_ is too much for someone who thinks not at all.”

Genji chuckles at that, and there is a bit of noise as he shifts around the room. “True.”

Behind him, he feels as much as hears Genji return to his place at his back, and he can sense the ninja fidgeting again, pressing needlessly against him.

“Shimada,” Zenyatta breathes, chiding, “what in the world are you--”

Zenyatta halts at the press of Genji’s lips against his nape, the fingers slipping around the wires and metal that support his waist.

It startles him. Not so much the action as his response to it, the swell of desire (aching, chaste) to melt back into Genji’s chest. To rest within his arms. To be consoled.

By one of them. By one of _them_.

Genji gives an apologetic little laugh at the stiffening in Zenyatta’s posture and withdraws somewhat.

“Sorry.” Genji murmurs against his shoulder. “Did I scare you?”

Zenyatta reaches for the words, “Of course not,” but they refuse to come. He searches disquietingly for something else, feeling lost while deprived even momentarily from speech, the truths and half-truths and whole-lies that have become so natural to him over the years. Nothing comes to him. A few seconds of silence stretches into a few minutes. The storm picks up outside.

Genji rests his cheek on Zenyatta’s shoulder (though Zenyatta cannot discern why, when it cannot be comfortable for soft flesh to sit flat against hard metal). Finally Genji says, “I heard about your brother.”

Zenyatta angles his head slightly down, actively avoiding Genji’s probing gaze. “And?”

“I’m sorry.”

The omnic scoffs. “Please,” he says dryly. “Spare me your apologies, Shimada. You will all have reason to be sorry soon enough.”

“Yeah.” Genji laughs quietly. “I figured you’d say something like that. Then what can I give you instead? How can I make you feel better?”

“Why do you even feel the need to try?”

“This is my city. Everyone and everything in it belongs to me. So if something that happened in Numbani makes you sad while you’re in Hanamura, then your sadness is my responsibility, and fixing it falls to me.”

It’s beyond imagining that anyone could say something so arrogant without a hint of irony, but  for whatever reason, Zenyatta feels no desire to point that out. He only tells him, “There is nothing a human could do for me that could come even close to 'fixing' it.”

Genji’s arms unwind from his waist and his palms spread on Zenyatta’s thighs. “Then let me distract you from it.”

The smell of something burned on Genji’s clothes transmutes into a cry for ignition. Zenyatta resists the desire to answer it as best he can. “I do not want you to.”

“Why not?”

“Because you cannot bury your grief with your dead. You may lay their bodies to rest, but you have a duty to carry their ghosts--if you are to avenge them, you must endure the pain of their absence. You cannot allow yourself to become distracted.”

“Even if you want to be?”

“Even if you want to be.”

“Not even for a minute?”

The omnic pauses. “I...suppose a minute is accepta--”

Genji turns him around by his shoulders, takes his face in his hands, and kisses him. Zenyatta doesn’t resist--he gives in immediately, inured as he is to Genji, to his wants and needs, his candid, guileless selfishness.

For all that, it is Genji who withdraws from the kiss first, and Zenyatta follows the motion as if in trance, trying to reinitiate even as Genji disengages.

“Sorry, beautiful,” Genji murmurs, smiling, keeping inches out of reach. “Minute’s up.”

“Are you certain?” Zenyatta says, holding onto Genji’s biceps. “It seemed much shorter.”

“Well, time _is_ an illusion.”

“Then who is to say that a minute is not a few seconds? Or conversely, who is to say that a minute cannot be a few hours, or a few days?”

“A few days?” Genji laughs. “I don’t think I could last that long.”

“Of course not.” Zenyatta drags Genji back to him, angles his head invitingly, hoping Genji will rise to the bait. “But it would not be a few days--it would only be a minute.”

“Oh,” says Genji. His eyes and voice seem hazy--soft around the edges. He starts to lean back in. “That’s right.”

A knock at the door makes both of them turn. “Master Zenyatta,” a voice comes from the other side, the soft, high synth of his aide Maha, “we received more news from Numbani with respect to what...what happened. One of Adhiraj’s units is transmitting it now. Would you like to receive it directly?”

“Yes, of course,” Zenyatta calls. “Ask him to wait a moment. I will be right out. Thank you for telling me.”

“Yes, Master Zenyatta,” she says--but lingers for a moment, openly wanting to say more but being palpably unable. Her steps are quiet and unsure when she finally retreats out of the suite.

Zenyatta turns back to Genji, not knowing what to say, speechless beneath a swell of melancholy. Genji takes the initiative in his stead.

“Looks like the illusion’s over.” He starts to stand--but Zenyatta fails to release his arms, leaving them both half stood there as Genji rising begins to drag him up as well. The ninja smiles gently, overly tolerant of the foible. “Unless you want me to stay?”

 _Yes,_ rings clear inside Zenyatta, sword keen and knife bright. Tepidly, he says, “It is not a matter of want.”

Genji unlatches his hands from his arms--but squeezes them in his grasp, and doesn’t let them go. “Do you _need_ me to stay?”

 _Yes, yes, yes,_ pounding, rattling, beating outward with elbows and knees.

“No,” says Zenyatta. He pulls his hands out of Genji’s and rises to his full height. The lights of his array create a grid of blue in the centers of Genji’s eyes as they follow him up. “I do not need anything from you.”

Genji just laughs (impervious to being hurt, accustom to cruelty). “Okay. Okay.” He starts to move to the balcony door and Zenyatta watches him go. He has just rested his hands on the door handles, the shadows of rain streaking down his form, when he pauses. “It’ll be morning soon,” he says, looking out through the glass. “Are you free in a few hours?

“I do not know,” Zenyatta answers cautiously. “Why do you ask?”

“We should meet up again and make out later.”

“ _Shimada-_ -” Zenyatta starts, but Genji interrupts him immediately.

“You know,” he looks over his shoulder, eyebrow quirked, “there’s no reason to keep calling me that. If you’re not going to use an honorific, you might as well start calling me ‘Genji.’”

“To what end?”

“I dunno. Because we’re friends?”

“Are we?”

“Not really,” Genji chuckles. He pushes down on the door handles. “But close enough, right?”

The balcony door opens and shuts. Genji is gone without having let even a sliver of storm inside.

... 

Zenyatta finds out before morning the reason for the acrid scent Genji carried with him that evening.

AD1’s killer, who was identified almost immediately, had gone missing not long after he’d committed the crime. Not surprising, considering the nature of his actions. But while searching for him, rather than discovering him hiding out somewhere in Numbani, Zenyatta’s information network gets a hit on the killer’s name from well outside Africa--in Japan.

Zenyatta listens quietly as Adhiraj transmits his findings, a cool burble of omnic blips--tells him about the charred corpse deposited neatly behind a gas station in Tokyo, the body’s clothes folded beside it and a passport and driver’s license laid politely on top, like a gift. Adhiraj states that there are further inquiries to be made as to how a man was able to commit a crime in one place, and roughly twenty-four hours later, show up dead several thousand miles away. And Zenyatta nods along--pretending as if he does not already know exactly what happened.

Once they have gone through everything, he thanks Adhiraj for the information and returns to his room. He fights back the urge to laugh as he goes, because it's so predictably over the top, completely excessive as far as mourning presents go. Nevertheless the news is not unwelcome.  

He decides to accept Genji's condolences after all. 


End file.
